Exhibition at Knoxville Museum of Art, Tennessee. April 2005. For an excerpt of the text of the catalogue that accompanied the exhibition by curator Dana Self click here. or read on:
SubUrban: Timothy Horn

Australian artist Timothy Horn has removed jewelry from the territory of the body and cast it monumental. He has, to borrow terminology from theoretician Susan Stewart, transformed the miniature into the gigantic. With these oversized sculptures of jewelry, Timothy Horn has taken the interiorized miniature and transformed it into the exaggerated exterior. Tiny objects of adornment have become oversized territories of confusion, desire, and satire. Through enlargement the "jewelry" becomes even more desirable, yet also begins to comment on social and cultural attachment to adornment and its attendant sexuality. By adding provocative narrative titles such as I Want Candy, Coeur de Creme, or Bloody Mary, Horn generates more discussion about sexualized bodies and objects. He is futher interested in discovering when the beautiful becomes the grotesque and perhaps even threatening. Through his works he queries how far ornamentation can be pushed before it becomes disturbing and so different from its inception. The works are opulent and seductive, but in their enlarged state, somewhat creepy. By the seemingly simple act of resizing a common object, Horn demonstrates how size has psychological impact, especailly when an object is removed from familiar territory and into unfamiliar territory: off the body and onto the wall. In addition to his monumental jewelry sculpture, Horn also casts large ornamental objects such as chandeliers in alternative materials such as rubber, commenting on material and its impact.